


Collateral Damage

by Nefhiriel



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Injury, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-20
Updated: 2011-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-19 14:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nefhiriel/pseuds/Nefhiriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than one way to punish a thief—and right now Neal would much rather be safely in prison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral Damage

  
***

Peter was expecting Neal to be scared—not openly terrified, pale, desperate.

As soon as he walked into the room, Neal's eyes latched onto the sight of Peter with a visible relief that made _Peter_ scared. Because when Neal was too far out of his depth to care whether or not Peter saw the truth, then Peter was probably out of his depth, too.

They'd worked Neal over. He had split lip and dried blood on his upper lip from a bloody nose. His suit coat was missing, leaving him shivering in slacks and a crumpled pale-blue dress shirt that had spots of red on it, now, too.

They'd been “interrogating” him for over an hour, and they didn't care if Peter saw the evidence. That was the arrogance of diplomatic immunity at work.

Peter's job was to uphold the law, but that didn't mean he always agreed with it. Sometimes he disliked it. Right then he hated it.

“Peter.” Neal's voice was gravelly.

“Hey...you holding up?” It was a stupid question. Neal looked like he'd already fallen apart and given up pretending otherwise. But while Neal had spent the last hour being interrogated, Peter had been busy being _civilized_ , erasing the pounding rage and worry from his thoughts and actions, because going in guns blazing wasn't an option when you were trying to get into an embassy building.

“You gotta get me out of here, Peter.” Neal jerked absently at the cuffs holding him to the arms of the chair.

That was another thing that worried Peter. He'd half expected Neal to simply lift his arms and let the restraints fall away, like he'd done at the Howser Clinic. But either he hadn't had the time due to constant supervision, or he was really that off his game.

“Hey.” Peter crouched down in front of Neal, and put a hand on one of Neal's—a gesture that would've felt awkward under just about any other circumstance, but which at the moment felt like the only non-calloused gesture to make.

Neal's fingers were like ice, and Peter could feel the tension radiating from him.

“Neal, you didn't do it, did you?” Peter asked in a hushed voice, suddenly afraid of the answer. “Tell me you didn't steal the ambassador's ring.” _Please_ , please _tell me you wouldn't do anything that stupid..._

“ _No_.” Neal's response was as immediate and simple as that. No clever comeback. No mocking looks. No Caffrey tricks. Just a ragged denial.

Peter believed him. He patted Neal's hand, because the kid looked like he needed something closer to a hug (from _Elizabeth_ , that was, or maybe June), and very possibly a sedative.

“I didn't...take it. I didn't...” Neal haltingly insisted.

It put a sick, hard feeling in Peter's stomach to hear Neal plead like that. He had the even sicker feeling that it was a chorus Neal had repeated to his questioners more than once. Averse to violence as he was, Neal could be surprisingly tough, and wasn't likely to crumple easily under physical pain. What had they been _doing_ to him to get him this shaken up?

“I promise, Peter. I didn't...”

“I _believe_ you,” Peter interrupted firmly. “We'll get this sorted out.” He glanced down at his watch. Someone would probably be pounding on the door soon. The ambassador had only grudgingly let Peter in after Peter had promised that he'd do his best to convince Neal to come clean. Now that he had done so, Peter got the bad feeling the ambassador wouldn't accept the truth coming from Peter any more than he'd accepted it from Neal.

It had all started with Neal's cocky insistence that he could get all the information they needed about their case from someone he knew. Unfortunately, said informant worked at the embassy and refused to meet on any other turf. If Peter had known his casually-made decision of the morning was going to wind up landing him with this by mid-afternoon...

“Please don't go, Peter.”

The knot in Peter's stomach was by this point making it hard to speak calmly and reassuringly. Neal had to know the last thing the world Peter wanted to do was leave him at the mercy of the ambassador for a minute longer.

“Neal—”

“—they're going to cut my hand off.”

Peter stared at him. “What?”

“He said they were going to extradite me, and...” Neal was panting faintly, constructing his sentences sloppily, without any of his usual precision or care. “They're going to...punish me, according to their laws, and...and cut off my hand. Said...that's what they do to thieves. They can't do that, can they?”

“No— _no_ ,” Peter hurried to assure him, horrified to finally understand the cause of Neal's terror. “That's not going to happen.”

But it was easy enough to see why Neal, after the last hour, might be in doubt.

“They said...”

“Neal,” Peter interrupted him, firmly, “listen to me. It's not going to come to that.”

“I'm a criminal—”

“—I'm not going to let it come to that. You're a citizen of the United States. You have rights. _Neal_?” Peter waited until Neal met his gaze. “I'm gonna get you out of this, okay?”

“Okay.”

Peter didn't like the faintly glazed look dulling Neal's eyes. His skin felt clammy under Peter's hand. He needed medical care, he needed—

The door opened, and Peter stood quickly, automatically taking a protective stance in front of Neal. The part of him that was a trained federal agent was trying to keep phrases like “international incident” at the forefront of his mind as a guiding mantra to keep his tempter in check. The rest of him preferred the much simpler approach of putting his fist through the face of the next person to try laying a finger on Neal.

It was the ambassador himself who came through the door, two men trailing respectfully behind him. Something in his manner had changed drastically.

“You may take him, now, Agent Burke.”

It was the last thing Peter expected to hear. He should've just accepted it; taken Neal and left. But after what they'd put Neal through, he couldn't.

He relaxed his posture, however, and put on a diplomatic face, as he inquired stiffly, “You found the missing ring, Ambassador?”

“Ah... Yes. I did. This has all been a mistake. A small misunderstanding.”

Peter knew his diplomacy would fail him right then and there if he said anything, so he simply waited.

The ambassador was looking highly uncomfortable by this point. “My wife took it from the vault when she left early this morning, to wear to a function. My secretary failed to relay that information to me. I apologize for all this.”

It was enough. For now. If anything more could be done in response to this “misunderstanding,” Hughes would take care of it. Peter couldn't let himself think about just how little that would likely wind up being. If he did, he would wind up do something that he would regret (the consequences of, at least, and much later).

Right now, he just wanted to get Neal out of here like he'd promised.

“You'll excuse me then, Ambassador,” Peter mock-requested, already turning, pulling out his wallet to produce the handcuff key he kept there.

Pulling Neal's arm around his neck, Peter helped to support his weight as they made their way out of the building. Neal was unusually pliant, and Peter hoped it was just the crash after adrenaline and fear making him limp and dependent, and nothing worse. After he got him to ER, he'd make sure there was photographic evidence for every bruise he'd just acquired.

“Peter?” Neal whispered hoarsely near his ear, stumbling, letting Peter's arm around his waist steady him.

“Hmm.”

“I got the information we needed.”

“That's good.”

“Then why d'you look so grumpy?” Neal mumbled.

Grumpy? “Grumpy” was spilling coffee down the front of a white shirt, or getting lemon juice on a paper-cut, or tripping over a crack in the sidewalk. “Grumpy” did not even _approach_...

“Thanks, Peter,” Neal mumbled again, tiredly. “Should've known you wouldn't let them do it.”

The doors were in sight. Jones would be waiting with the car. Neal would be alright. And Neal didn't have to know that for a while there Peter had felt completely helpless to stop _anything_.

“You're welcome, buddy.”

***  


**Author's Note:**

> I intentionality left the ambassador nameless, and nation-less, both to avoid unintentionally offending anyone, and because I wanted this to be a quick one-shot without the complication of in-depth research into international laws. ;)


End file.
